Wednesday, October 3, 2007

"Chuck" Recap & Review - "Chuck Versus The Helicopter"

Chuck"Chuck Versus The Helicopter"

Original Air Date October 1, 2007

Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer

The episode begins with a voice-over with some exposition from last week's pilot in case there are some newcomers tuning in. They reintroduce the main characters and give the back story about Chuck getting all Johnny Mnemonic with the government's secrets.

Then we see Chuck at work, getting in trouble as usual for some stuff about Large- Mart (Buy More's main competition apparently). Morgan (Joshua Gomez) tries to save the day by yanking the Large-Mart table cloth off the display without knocking over all the delicately stacked items, but of course, he fails. Poor Morgan, always the sidekick never the kick.

Sarah (Yvonne Strzechowski) is now working over at Wienerlicious [these vaguely hidden brand names are starting to get annoying. We all know The Nerd Herd is the Geek Squad, Buy More is Best Buy and Large Mart is Wal-Mart, just stop it already.] Sarah is also posing as Chuck's girlfriend, which is good because everyone and their super secret five-star general mother is after Chuck's brain. Anyway, Sarah tells Chuck of a plan involving the NSA's top doctor or scientist or smart guy or something Dr. Jonas Zarnow is being flown in to remove the secrets from Chucks brain post-haste.

Zarnow is being hidden from Chuck and Chuck can't meet Zarnow for some crazy spy stuff reasons. Anyway. Zarnow does his hocus pocus and we see some of the stuff in Chuck's head, including a Carter assignation plot, a spy in the White House and Oceanic 815 being shot down (wink wink Lost fans). Zarnow doesn't do the extracting of the secret data just yet (of course, cause the show's still got 40 minutes left) he'd rather meet Chuck personally before he starts the extraction but that's a no-no. So Zarnow leaves reluctantly but is "killed" when he turns the corner and his cell phone explodes inside his car. This leads to a bunch of back and forth "Casey vs. Sarah:he said/she said" that wasn't really that believable with Chuck caught in the middle and questioning his loyalty/affection for Sarah because each spy thinksthe other killed Zarnow.

There's a crazy dinner with secret agents and double entendres abound. Is Sarah trying to kill everyone with chocolate cake? Ha ha...not! This type of humor was funnier back on Three's Company. Turns out Zarnow isn't really dead he's just faking so he can find out who has the secret data. He kidnaps Sarah and shoots Casey with a tranquilizer dart leaving Chuck the only one who can save the day. Zarnow plans totorture name of Johnny Mnemonic out of her but doesn't have to once Chuck sees Zarnow trying to board a helicopter. His eyes go all Requiem for a Dream and he knows that Zarnow has been selling government secrets to the North Koreans for years. That's enough for Zarnow. He's got his man and he shoots Chuck with a dart (conveniently hitting him in the Pocket Protector™) and loading him aboard thehelicopter.

Chuck, of course, waits until they are airborne to unload the tranq darts into the pilot and Zarnow. Why he didn't just do it when they were on the ground remains a mystery. I guess he was hard-selling the fact that he was "knocked out" by the dart that hit him in the pocket. Sarah has to talk Chuck down in the helicopter and as it turns out flying a real helicopter is just like playing one of Chuck's nerdy video game flight simulators. Being a nerd saves the day again.

At the end of the episode we learn that the computer that Chuck downloaded into his brain is being rebuilt back in Washington or some secret lair underneath Virginia where they're always working on "it" (Sorry, Frank Zappa) and that once the rebuild is complete Chuck will become obsolete. 2 stars out of 5. Not a strong sophomore episode.